Suffering and the Heart of God Quotes

“I think a look at suffering humanity would lead to the realization that trauma is perhaps the greatest mission field of the twenty-first century.”
― Diane Mandt Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“You can do right and still have everything turn out wrong. I am not certain where we got the idea that was not so, given that the one we follow and call God did do everything right and ended up treated with gross injustice.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“And so I want us to look at injustice and its polar opposite, justice, which we are told is a requirement of our God for his people. It is not a lofty idea; it is not a suggestion; it is not a liberal cause; and it is not simply for those who are not busy. It is a requirement of the God who is himself Justice.”
― Diane Mandt Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“The Crucified is the One most traumatized. He has borne the World Trade Center. He has carried the Iraq war, the destruction in Syria, the Rwandan massacres, the AIDS crisis, the poverty of our inner cities, and the abused and trafficked children. He was wounded for the sins of those who perpetrated such horrors. He has carried the griefs and sorrows of the multitudes who have suffered the natural disasters of this world--the earthquakes, cyclones, and tsunamis. And he has borne our selfishness, our complacency, our love of success, and our pride. He has been in the darkness. He has known the loss of all things. He has been abandoned by his Father. He has been to hell. There is no part of any tragedy that he has not known or carried. He has done this so that none of us need face tragedy alone because he has been there before us and will go with us. and what he has done for us in Gethsemane and at Calvary he ask us to do as well. We are called to enter into relationships centered on suffering so that we might reveal in flesh and blood the nature of the Crucified One.”
― Diane Mandt Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Pain is the only protest in the human constitution that something is wrong. It is the only thing that raises its voice against existing abuses. If you jump to silence pain, you will fail to find the wound.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“I fear that we are often sleeping in the garden rather than watching with our Savior because the suffering is not ours.”
― Diane Mandt Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“A depressed, struggling, hungry system—be it a family, a nation, a church, or an organization—is easy prey for a narcissist. He believes he can deliver the moon, or perhaps believes he is the moon. He seems to bring hope, promise, life, and growth. The faith of the struggling system is placed in him—subtly, not seeing that it is a misplaced hope.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“When we hear justifications, excuses, blaming, selfishness, or a focus on the sins of another, we can be sure we do not have true repentance.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Scripture says our hearts are deceived in incomprehensible ways. So often the church is naïve about deception and its workings in our lives. That leads to “I’m sorry,” being a sufficient response to hideous abuse and stopping outward behavior a sure sign of repentance. Repentance means to have another mind about something. It is not merely words and tears and promises, but an intensely god-ward sorrow that results in lasting transformation exhibited repeatedly over time.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Repentance is not verbal only. It is always demonstrated consistently in a life over time. And true repentance is a process that requires time and more time to be made evident. When humans are caught in sin, they will say anything to make it better, including using biblical language to keep life running normally, especially when there is a lot at stake. The self-deception of the one who is exposed works overtime in an attempt to deceive his/her questioners, who also have the capacity to be deceived and sometimes in considering the potential outcomes conclude that deception is the better alternative than messy, exposed truth.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“The bottom line is that you cannot tell if repentance is genuine for a long, long time. If you think you can you will have not only fooled yourself, but you will risk vulnerable people.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“It seems we do not believe what we teach. If we did, we would know that an abuser is a slave and cannot simply stop. We would understand that the narcotic of self-deception has become so powerful in his life that he not only cannot stop lying; he does not even know when he is and has lost his capacity to tell truth from lies, good from evil. We would know that habituated sin has roots and tentacles and has long done damage to the soul so it is not easily routed out. And we would know that exposure, consequences, and treatment are necessary if there is ever to be freedom from the cancer that has sent tentacles throughout his life.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“As Christians we love words like forgiveness, redemption, and transformation. The use of such words does not make a transformed soul. Nor are such things accomplished by a few words, tears, and a little time.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“No system—family, church, community, or institution—is truly God’s work unless it is full of truth and love. Toleration of sin, pretense, disease, crookedness, or deviation from the truth means the system is in fact not the work of God, no matter the words used to describe it. I fear we have a tendency to submit ourselves to some command or idea of men—of the past, of tradition, of a systemic culture—and in so doing refuse to listen to and obey the living and ever-present God.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“After a chronic illness is diagnosed, everyone comes around the sick person. But years later it is easy to forget or say surely it is not that bad; it must be in his head. But over time he will watch his life eroded by the disease as it eats away at his body and his capacities. He will struggle with depression. His grief will be relentless. He will grieve his inability to do what his heart longs to do. He may eventually go from a full-orbed life to a bed. If he takes medication, he will suffer from side effects that will debilitate him in additional ways. His sleep will suffer, he will endure pain, and the daily care of his body will absorb more and more of his energy. This could last for decades. What will such a man need from you? How will you handle all of his emotions? Can you allow him to grieve, weep, and ask questions? Can you endure with him what he has no choice to endure? You will get tired of his illness and his limitations—so will he. You can leave; he cannot. Many will leave or forget. Grief does not come in neat packages.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“If you have not accepted death or endings as a reality, your own included, the loss you are confronting in another will become a threat to you and you will react wrongly. I believe that one of the reasons we so often criticize another’s process or rush them along is because we have not yet really accepted the reality, the finality of trauma, endings, or death ourselves. We want to make it less of a threat, to minimize it, and so we end up minimizing the griever’s loss. Surely, it cannot be that bad.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“In recent years I have begun to understand that the call of God on my life is a bit unusual. It is a clear call to enter into the fellowship of his sufferings. It is a call to weep with those who weep. We must not forget that we serve a God who weeps, for he never calls us to something we do not first find in him.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“We seem to set up what I call “forced choices” and argue among ourselves. Is healing in the counseling office or the local church? Are we dealing with pathology or sin? Do you follow psychology or theology? Let me tell you something: the choice itself is a fallacy. Cannot the work of God occur in both the counseling office and the local church? And ought they not to work together? Are we not dealing with both pathology and sin? The fallenness of this world is surely so pervasive that it wears many faces. Pathology and sin can occur separately and/ or together in the physical realm. Why not in the realm of our thinking, feeling, and willing?”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“If people worked harder, were more responsible, were not lazy, or simply thought differently, they would not be victims of injustice. We end up holding children morally responsible for sexual abuse, victims are blamed for rape, and battered wives own their husband’s violence. Our egocentricity says to us, “You have experienced these things because you have ”—not been responsible; not loved your spouse well; not made moral choices, etc. We do the same for poverty and lack of jobs. Implicit is the idea that if they did what we did, made similar choices to ours, or behaved well, then injustice would not be present in their lives. If someone is downtrodden or oppressed, it is probably their fault.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Pain is the only protest in the human constitution that something is wrong. It is the only thing that raises its voice against existing abuses. If you jump to silence pain, you will fail to find the wound. Pain is the Martin Luther of the human framework; it plasters the wall of the city with the announcement that something is wrong.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Sin hidden within a God-ordained structure is hardly success.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“How easy it is for all of us to deify the gifts God has given rather than the God who gave them!”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Another danger is that of sitting with garbage so long that you lose the ability to recognize it for what it is. You get numb. You’ve seen so many bad things that a little bit of bad doesn’t seem bad anymore. And then you become blind to your own garbage. The hideous result is that instead of helping make beauty out of garbage, we simply mix our garbage with the garbage of others.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“To live in the real Garbage City is to be impacted by the garbage. When you live with garbage and work with garbage, you start to smell like garbage. If you are there long enough, that smell permeates everything, and even if you walk away from the garbage, somehow it is still with you. There is a professional term for that in our field. It is called Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder or “compassion fatigue.” The process of attending to the garbage that is in this world and in our work can result in harmful biopsychosocial effects not unlike those experienced by our clients. To sit with sin and suffering with any empathy at all is to become vulnerable to the emotional and spiritual effects of vicarious traumatization.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“We must not neglect the workers who desperately need our love, our ears, our time, and our care. We must not neglect ourselves. An army that does not actively care for its soldiers is foolish, for its ranks will soon dwindle—or end up with soldiers that are a danger to themselves or others. We need to care for each other. When we do not care for the workers in the Ground Zeros of this world, they become the victims of the very tragedies they have gone to heal. We are some of those workers.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Saakvitne and Pearlman, in their workbook, Transforming the Pain, define vicarious traumatization as the “transformation of the therapist’s inner experience as a result of empathic engagement with another’s trauma” (i.e., it gets in).3 Secondary traumatization is an occupational hazard, an inescapable effect of trauma work. It is not viewed as something our clients do to us, but rather as a human consequence of knowing, caring, and facing the reality of trauma.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“You cannot sit with depression, abuse, strife, fear, etc. and not be shaped by it. We will catch the soul diseases of others. We read more and more in literature about secondary traumatic stress disorder. It is the nature of human beings to be impacted by what they sit with. If I habitually reflect trauma or sit with trauma, I will bear the image of trauma in my person. We see this even in the person of Jesus, who though he was perfect, bears in his person the image of our sin and suffering. If it was true of him, how much more so for us who are sinners ourselves!”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“You will be doing God’s work for him—not working for clients or for ourselves. It is easy to think it is for the sufferers—their burdens, their suffering. But if the work is done for them, then it is also governed by them. Whether they are pleased, less afraid, happy, etc. determines success. But some pain cannot be gotten rid of, some people have wrong goals, and some will not be pleased no matter what. If you work for them, you will be in bondage to their whims. It is also easy to work for yourself. Counseling can lead to feeling important, wise, or needed. It can also allow you to run into the pain of others to avoid your own. If we engage for ourselves, it can easily lead us to feed on the sheep and use them to make ourselves feel better. It is God’s work, and our offering is to him who is pleased by obedience, not success or importance.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Learn to sit with pain without immediately injecting a narcotic—into your client or yourself. Do not fear pain. When you sit with overwhelming pain it will frighten you, and you will want to alleviate it quickly so both people in the room can feel better. Be careful. Pain is the only protest in the human constitution that something is wrong. It is the only thing that raises its voice against existing abuses. If you jump to silence pain, you will fail to find the wound. Pain is a signal; it indicates danger.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

“Leadership without the above characteristics is not Christlike leadership no matter what a word master says. Christ has shown us the way; he has exemplified such leadership in the flesh for us so we do not have to be seduced. We are complicit with ungodliness when we turn a blind eye, support and protect existing perversions, or are compliant with narcissistic leadership in the name of success or anything else. Such leadership is described by Jesus in John 17:19: “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” In other words, “I am made holy; I am obedient to God so that the sheep that follow me may also come to bear his likeness.”
― Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores